NEW YORK --March 20, 2008 -- Graphic Systems Group today announced that Marketing Technology Officer Eric Hegdahl will chair next month's IPA Technical Conference. The 43rd annual IPA conference, to be held in downtown Chicago (April 22-24), will offer insight and ideas from the graphic communication industrys best and brightest technology leaders. The complete program, entitled Leveraging Cross Media Convergence, is now online at www.ipa.org/tech. For more information on GSG, go to www.gsgnyc.com.
 
Technical Conference attendees will experience best practices in critical workflow processes and examine color management, process automation, application features, collaboration tools, and more. There will be hands-on training on workflow processes and software applications on state-of-the-art workstations. The conference also includes keynotes and workflow reports, a supplier expo and a landmark technical study of digital printing.
 
Eric Hegdahl Quote
 
"This year's event strives to reach out to the creative community and supplement their understanding of an evolving digital production workflow," notes Hegdahl. "We started developing the program last fall and have worked smartly to make each session a dynamic and educational forum. Coming from the design side myself, I appreciate the value in helping the creative community to better understand prepress and production applications and workflows. With technical offerings enabling designers to have increasing control on the digital workflow, their welcomed influence has growing impact on the production quality and ultimately the profitability of a job. This is a win-win for both design and production businesses."
 
Charitable Impact: Big Brother Big Sister
 
To demonstrate the impact of a workflow in harmony, IPA will execute a Cross Media Marketing Campaign to the benefit of the charitable organization, Big Brother Big Sister of Chicago. On the Monday evening before the conference starts, volunteers will conduct a photo shoot, color manage and retouch the portraits, produce creative ads and digitally distribute the ads to various media outlets for publication, as well as potential outdoor and broadcast promotional venues.

 
"The goal is to exemplify how open communications and active coordination between the creative process and production teams (combined with the proper technology and workflow) can result in the fast and professional turnaround of a Cross-media campaign," adds Hegdahl. "Promoting the hard work of the good people at Big Brother Big Sister gives this demonstration a value-added purpose." For more information on a local chapter of Big Brother Big Sister go to: www.bbbs.org.  

IPA Quote
 
IPA President Steve Bonoff added, "IPA has been fortunate to have Eric Hegdahl lead the development team for the 2008 IPA Technical Conference. His workflow expertise and leadership ability have resulted in IPA offering an incredibly relevant and exciting conference."